3D printing as ‘rapid prototyping’
3D printing today is often associated with a process called ‘rapid prototyping’ – which is used by research and development (R&D) teams to create a physical representation of a new invention (prototype) so that it can be tested and validated.
On a professional level, 3D-printing is already becoming a popular solution to manufacture products in small series, fast and custom-made. 3D-printing of polymers and metals already occurs on an advanced scale, alongside this 3D-printing of ceramics is rising.
3D-printing at Bronkhorst
3D-printers are very useful within the production environment. This is demonstrated by their use here at Bronkhorst - for product as well as process development. It really has become a new and very accessible way of manufacturing.
We use several 3D-printers mainly for visualisation purposes - 'the rapid prototyping way' - and to print useful tooling to facilitate the production of mass flow controllers and meters. Prior to using 3D-printing, a prototype of a component had to be manufactured at an external tool shop, which took some time - and investment - before it was ready. The use of 3D-printing has allowed us to increase our productivity: it is much faster to print a component or a tool ourselves.
Within a few hours, we can evaluate the design of a component: will it really work in the way we expected it, does it really fit? Moreover, for small quantities, no investment is required for manufacturing a mould.
In addition to its speed, 3D-printing has some convincing advantages. It is much more powerful to deal with a real component - a plastic model, with some real look & feel - than a 3D-rendered image which may look fantastic but isn't in real life. In addition, the communication between R&D, engineering and production works that much better having a component in your hand to talk about. Which are the key problems we will encounter, what can be the risks of a new design? In the
R&D department, 3D-printing is mainly used to test the functionality of a design. The engineering department goes one step beyond, in making the design feasible and realisable.